Last April we were still feeling the immediate effects of March’s not-so-graceful slide off the rails. At the time, I suggested that it could be fruitful to re-evaluate the measures of academic productivity and ask what work was possible or desirable under these (still current) conditions. But, rather than taking time for reflection, it appears, a year onwards, that we’ve just steamed ahead. It’s mostly been expected that the same scope of activities should take place (but virtually) and that they’re possible at the same previously unreasonable pace.
When I look around for pandemic-acknowledged accommodations, I see relatively few of them.
I wrote over the past winter, but not at the same pace as I might have otherwise. I wrote most days. I met deadlines. I met one writing deadline on a Friday and another one on the following Monday. I made more writing deadlines and I met those too. Writing happened amidst all of the ‘too muchs’ and the ‘too fews’: too much screen time, too many Zoom meetings, too many overlapping Zoom obligations, too many unnecessary email messages, too few truly important exchanges, and too few clearly communicated messages that acknowledge the unequal effects of the pandemic for scholarship and scholarly writing.
I’m switching gears. From here on in I’m using the remaining few months of my sabbatical to prioritize the least visible part of my job: reading.
When I meet people who don’t work in academia they surmise that I must spend a lot of time reading. This common perception doesn’t reflect how little attention is actually paid to reading in academia. In fact, there are only two other times that I can recall when I’ve purposively set aside a significant amount of time for reading. One was when I was preparing for my PhD comprehensive examinations and reading was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. The only other time was during a sabbatical eighteen years ago. I permitted myself an entire summer of reading as preparation for the early phase of writing a book. So, again, exactly what I was supposed to be doing.
Unsurprisingly then, there’s lots written in the academic blogsphere about scholarly writing, but a lot less about scholarly reading. In one often cited and frequently recommended academic blog, I had to scroll back through eight years of blog posts before I could find a frank discussion about the importance of reading for academic writing.
This begs the obvious question: if reading isn’t important, for whom are we writing?
There are at least three reasons to make reading visible: first, reading is work; second, reading is important because it isn’t writing; and third, reading is the space where we continue to learn about ourselves in relation to our research.
It’s work to struggle against the dominant ‘reading-is-not work’ rhetoric that lives inside our universities and our heads. Reading is work even for those who are prolific readers. It’s even more work for those who have struggled with reading and by dismissing its significance, we’re dismissing their accomplishment. Reading is one of the ways we’re a part of larger conversations, how we understand who’s in the conversation, who’s not in the conversation, and what’s at stake. Similar to everyday conversations, reading has a background, is loaded with cues, and requires close attention, and an understanding of nuance. It takes work to decipher it and energy to engage with it. A long day of reading can leave you feeling exhausted. But, it can also leave you buzzing and feeling exhilarated.
Reading is important because it isn’t writing. We write, we take breaks, we stop writing, we resume writing, we write on and off, and we write more, and we write less. It’s a muscle that can be over exerted. In academia, we’re skilled at giving each other writing advice, but we’re far less skilled at taking reading seriously. So what if we read, as researcher and blogger Helen Kara suggests (‘Shut Up and Read’) in the sun lounger? So what if we read in the bath? So what if we read in the middle of the day? And so what if we read all day?
Reading helps us to learn about ourselves in relation to our research. We’re almost always writing with readers in mind and we tailor our writing to their future reading. When we write, we doubt ourselves. We edit ourselves. We censor ourselves. There are stops and starts to craft an articulate phrase, correct our sentence structure, and reorganize our ideas. When we’re reading, someone else has already done this work for us. When we’re reading we’re freer to think things over, to question, and to venture down new pathways without feeling misled. This is where we really learn about what truly interests us.
It’s not a coincidence that readers of popular fiction occupy the #bookstagram real estate.
#bookstagram is how book titles, reviews, recommendations, and ideas are shared on Instagram and the fact that this might have to be explained to academics already says something. We’ve left this space to readers of popular fiction and we barely populate the space or suit it for our own purposes. We don’t share what we’re reading or try to demonstrate how reading is connected to scholarly writing. But, what if we occupied this space too? What if we openly shared our titles, our reading lists, and our honest reviews, opinions, and ideas with other scholarly readers?
What if we made reading as visible as people often assume it to be?
What if we just started by showing up in #bookstagram space? What if we made reading visible? What kinds of scholarly communities might we be able to create, foster, and enhance?
upalonger 